The global crisis, manufacturing firms, regulations and taxes

Abstract

In this study, we focus on how regulations and taxes affect manufacturing firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We examine whether overall regulations became a bigger obstacle to these firms after the 2008-2009 Global crisis. We also examine whether tax inspections became a bigger obstacle after the Global crisis. Besides regulations and tax inspections, we also look into the prevalence of corruption related to tax officials before and after the Global crisis. Using two large datasets (i.e. the BEEPS IV and BEEPS V surveys), we are able to compare the pre-crisis period to the post-crisis period. Our results show that, in this region, post-crisis, senior managers spent more time on dealing with overall regulations which includes tax-related regulations and other types of regulations. Therefore, we can conclude that, post-crisis, regulations became a bigger obstacle to manufacturing firms’ operations. We also find that, post-crisis, there was a significant drop in the percentage of firms that had inspections or meetings with tax officials. Also, post-crisis, each firm on average, had fewer inspections or meetings with tax officials. Therefore, while overall regulations became a bigger obstacle to these firms, tax inspections became a smaller problem. When we examine corruption, we find that there was no significant change in the prevalence of bribes related to tax officials. Before and after the Global crisis, a similar percentage (8-9%) of manufacturing firms had to deal with bribe requests by tax officials. Future studies may focus on other types of regulations which include employment regulations, health and safety regulations, licensing regulations, environmental regulations, and zoning regulations, and the corruption related to these regulations.